Celeste shoved another spoonful into her mouth to avoid the awkward squeak she wanted to make. He wore lavishly colored clothing beneath a long, violet coat, and his good looks and well-groomed goatee distracted from his age, but he could have been her father, she supposed, in that regard. But his skin was as dark as a nutmeg seed as opposed to the milkiness of hers, his shoulder-length hair bounced in tight coils unlike how hers fell heavy and ragged, and his soft features were wide and round in contrast to the sharp points of her own. She swallowed and stuttered, “I’m from Clarriseau,” as if that explained it.
“Ah, well, I’ve journeyed all over, but havenotmade it out to that little isle,thank the gods.” His wider grin revealed a charming set of impressively straight teeth.
She understood—she would be relieved to not be her parent as well.
“Don’t even think about it, Longfury.” Halfrida came bustling back, throwing down her cleaning linen on the bartop and scowling at the man. “She’s much too young for you.”
“That’s only exactly what we were discussing, Miss Morn! You never know when your progeny might walk through the door on a quest to find you, so it’s best to head off the worry right away and ask.”
“That isnota common concern for most folk, even those who gallivant across the realm, so long as they keep it in their trousers!”
“Well, now, where’s the fun in that?” The man’s grin never faltered, and in one swift move, he pulled the lute strapped to his back over his shoulder and began to strum. “If I had a copper for every lass, I’d be as rich in coin as I am in—”
“Longfury!” Halfrida had only been rolling her eyes as she wiped down the bar, but when she cut him off, there was a burst of giggles from the kitchen door, and it swung in the wake of sprinting children. “I told you to keep it clean until the little ones are in bed.”
He only laughed as the three ran past, rising as he continued to strum, following at the children’s beckoning. The man broke into another song, but the lyrics were decidedly more chaste as he sang about a band of corsairs turned land travelers after their ship had been dragged to the depths of the Maroon Sea by the gods themselves.
Celeste chuckled until she felt Kori’s eyes on her again. She scooped another spoonful into her mouth and tried to look demure, but to her surprise, Kori actually nodded at her and went back to her own food.
“Don’t mind Gaspard Longfury.” Halfrida bit down on the man’s full name like testing a gold coin and finding out it was counterfeit. “The only threat he poses is getting one of his dirty, little songs buzzing in your ears like a mosquito when you’re trying to fall asleep. Oh, look at you, nearly finished, you must have been famished! But of course you are, you’re barely more than bones yourself. You all right up in that temple all by your lonesome?”
Celeste licked her spoon clean and nodded, heart speeding up.
“It’s come down with a bad case of being cursed, they say, since the priests abandoned it a few years back, not that it was a great loss to the rest of us—drunkards, both of them, brewed so much of their own ale we never even saw them in town! But if you say it’s fine, then it’s fine, nobody should be dictating where a woman ought or oughtn’t be anyway. Just remember, if you get lonely, this place has plenty of empty rooms and most of them don’t leak.” She wiped down a stein and threw Celeste a boastful grin. “Whole village is a bit leaky really, but that’s not a reason to give up on it. We beat a plague and we beat a werewolf infestation and we beat a corrupt mayor—well, ran him out of town actually, but I would have liked to beat him.”
Eyes wide, Celeste grabbed the hunk of bread left on her plate and pocketed it. “That sounds like a tough couple years.”
“That was just one season!” Halfrida laughed as if it were not nearly as tragic as it clearly was. “But I refuse to let the realm tell me to give up on this place. I’ll give up when I’m good and ready.”
The smile Halfrida gave Celeste then was full of a warm mischief. The woman had not mentioned anything about the temple’s previous occupant nor Celeste’s resemblance to her which was the best relief she could have hoped for, and probably pushed her luck to its limit. With gracious thank yous, she gave her spoon a last lick and made her way out of the Dew Drop Inn and into the darkness of newly fallen night.
There was a chill in the air, and Celeste shivered, chastising herself once again for forgetting her cloak. She rubbed skinny arms and looked on the circle in Briarwyke’s center. There was no one about which was how she preferred things, though the inn’s warmth and company had been surprisingly pleasant.
The two moons, Lo and Ero, hung a bit lower in the sky, bright dots amongst the sea of deepening blue. If she kept to the outskirts of the village, she couldn’t befoul anyone’s life or get in their way, and maybe a weekly meal in town wouldn’t be so bad.
If the people of Briarwyke didn’t need a witch, that was just fine—she didn’t intend to be one.
CHAPTER 3
THE GODS ARE IN THE DETAILS
It was not considered an omen, dusk, though the timing could have been better for a Holy Knight of Valcord to meet his destiny. But as travel and plot would have it, the sky was alight with the orange glow of the sun’s last rays when Reeve rode into the outskirts of Briarwyke.
The village came into view over the ridge just as the sun slipped behind the trees. The forest’s pines were silhouetted against a darkening sky, and the boot-worn road was covered in a pall of blue with coming night. That was all right—Reeve liked blue. He was probably supposed to prefer yellow, like the crest on his surcoat of the winged, rising sun, but he had always been partial to the softness of the sky against the clouds and the way clusters of cornflowers dotted open fields.
Gently tugging his horse to a stop, Reeve dismounted and took Earylyte’s reins in hand. Briarwyke was still many paces off, the first farmhouse coming up on their left, but the village looked to be even smaller than he’d been told, and riding through would not be polite.
“So, we’ve made it back?”
Reeve sighed, grinning. “That we have.”
“And no running away this time?”
That made his grin falter. “I didn’t run. I wasn’t even here to begin with, not really.”
There was a sound, a thoughtful one, that came from his baldric, though the maker had neither mouth nor mind to produce it. “Well, you were an Abyss of a lot closer before.”
Reeve grunted and glared down at the hilt of the Obsidian Widow Maker. “I know, you keep reminding me.”
